In 1998 Leakey’s team also discovered
Kenyanthropus platyops (3.5–3.2 mya) at Lomekwi on the western shore of Lake Turkana in northern Kenya. It too is associated with woodland fauna. It possesses some primitive skull features but shares with early
Homo a flat and tall face. Though it overlaps in time with
A. afarensis (described below), it appears to be quite...

human evolution

...with long upper limbs, as well as the configuration of its rib cage, indicate that they could readily climb and maneuver in trees.
A. bahrelghazali (3.5–3.0 mya) of central Chad and
Kenyanthropus platyops (3.5 mya) from northern Kenya are represented solely by teeth and by skull and jaw fragments from which positional behaviour cannot be inferred.

...westernmost species,
Australopithecus bahrelghazali, appears to have lived in a mosaic of open and wooded biomes near a river. Mammalian fossils from Lomekwi, northern Kenya, indicate that
Kenyanthropus platyops inhabited a relatively well-watered area of forest or closed woodland or the forest edge between them. The habitat of the 3.5-million-year-old Laetoli hominins in northern...

The relationships among
Australopithecus,
K. platyops,
Paranthropus, and the direct ancestors of
Homo are unknown. Because of its early date and geographic location,
A. anamensis may be the common ancestor of
A. afarensis,
A. garhi,
K. platyops, and perhaps the Laetoli Pliocene hominins of eastern Africa,
A. bahrelghazali of central...

Koobi Fora

In other fossil-bearing sites west of Lake Turkana, several other species of hominins have been found, including
Kenyanthropus platyops (3.2 mya), which has facial traits similar to those of the controversial 1.9-million-year-old
H. habilis skull KNM-ER 1470—a skull that in some ways resembles
Australopithecus. In sediments from 2.5 mya comes...

Leakey

...in the Turkana region, often in collaboration with their daughter Louise (b. 1972). In 1998 her team discovered fossil remains, more than three million years old, of a hominin that she named
Kenyanthropus platyops.